


the sort of thing you like (if you like that sort of thing)

by inlovewithnight



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Other, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-04
Updated: 2011-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-19 00:22:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Post-ep for "Jerry's Painting"</p>
    </blockquote>





	the sort of thing you like (if you like that sort of thing)

**Author's Note:**

> Post-ep for "Jerry's Painting"

Ben did not consider himself an optimist. That was Chris's gig, and while Chris was his boss, his friend, and terrifyingly healthy, he was not Ben's role model in any practical way.

Still, apparently some positive thinking had slipped in while Ben wasn't looking, because he really thought that teaching April and Andy to be adults would lead to life in the house becoming something that resembled normal. Or at least Pawnee levels of normal. Or...he thought there would be a tangible change, was his point.

He squinted at the clock, hoping somehow the numbers would change to something less depressing. No. It was still 2:30 in the morning. He sighed, got out of bed, and walked out to the living room.

"Guys," he said. "You guys."

"Don't mess us up," April said. "We're busy."

"I can see that." Andy had the broom that Ben ordered them to buy with the rest of their adulthood supplies, and a can of tuna. April was standing in front of the stove with a large panel of cardboard and a grim expression. "You're busy playing floor hockey."

"Right on, dude!" Andy paused in knocking the tuna can back and forth across the kitchen to beam at him. "You want to play?"

"It's 2:30 in the morning."

"Yeah." Andy scratched his nose with the end of the broom handle. "You want to play?"

Ben had a not-inconsiderable amount of experience at controlling himself when he was tempted to start yelling. Yelling was not a helpful or productive use of time. He took a deep breath and held it until he could feel his pulse throbbing in his temples. "No. I don't want to play. I want to sleep, because I have to get up for work in four hours."

"That sucks, man," Andy said earnestly.

"Don't you also have to get up for work?"

"Not in four hours." April tossed her cardboard on top of the stove. "But you've ruined it now, so we might as well go to bed."

Ben caught himself actually opening his mouth to apologize, which was just completely ridiculous. He closed it again and folded his arms over his chest, frowning at both of them instead. It was important to establish boundaries and dominance right now. Like he was dealing with a couple of puppies. Dumb, overexcited puppies who didn't believe they had a bedtime.

This was pretty much the complete opposite of the "teach them to be adults" plan.

"Come on, Andy." April took Andy's arm and tugged him toward the hallway. "He's all grumpy now, and we should get some sleep, I guess. Ron wants me to file stuff tomorrow."

"Filing's awesome, though," Andy said, following her to the bedroom. "You can wear your headphones the whole time and just, like, rock out."

Ben stood in the kitchen for a few more minutes, uncomfortably aware that he might as well have "buzzkill" written across his forehead. Not that he was unfamiliar with the feeling, but it still sucked.

Other things he was uncomfortably aware of: that April had been wearing just her panties, one of those t-shirts that were cut to hug every line of a girl's body, and _not_ a bra. He was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to be thinking about that at all.

"This," he told the broom and tuna can, "was probably a very, very bad idea."

The broom and tuna didn't have any helpful input, so he went back to bed.

**

By some miracle, early-morning floor hockey turned into "only before 10 PM floor hockey" without Ben having to say anything about it at all. He wondered if he should give them some kind of reward for that, then realized he was still thinking of them as puppies. And he was not going to do that. He was going to treat them like mature, reasonable adults.

On the day he made that determination, he got home late from an emergency staff meeting about whether or not the squirrels behind City Hall had gone rogue. (No conclusions reached, question tabled because no one was sure exactly how to tell if a squirrel _had_ gone rogue, or what behavior "rogue" might encompass. Chris proposed that Ben do some research on the matter; Ben proposed that he farm that question off on Tom; Tom announced his intention to give the project to Jerry; Chris declared things an all-around success and adjourned them at 6:30 PM before dragging Ben back to his office for a papaya-wheatgrass smoothie and an earnest discussion about Ben's love life that lasted until 8:42.)

At any rate, Ben arrived home late, hungry, and with a more distinct than ever feeling that his time in Pawnee was going to be an object lesson in taking the bitter with the sweet, only to find that his roommates had somehow acquired beer.

Ben's plans had never included a drunk April and Andy. He stood in the doorway, imagining this was how cavalry soldiers must have felt back when there were cavalries. Riding along, minding their own business, thinking about horses, and all of a sudden coming around a corner and bam. Faced with their own demise.

"Ben Wyatt!" Andy threw his arms in the air and bellowed. " _Ben Wyatt!_ You're home!"

"Yes," Ben said. "Here I am."

"That's awesome. _Ben Wyatt!_ You're awesome. Come have a beer, dude!"

Ben took a minute to rifle through his collection of stock excuses for why he couldn't possibly. His eyes flicked to April, who was sitting on the couch holding a beer can to her lips and giving him one of those blank, expressionless stares of hers that his brain automatically translated as something really depressing to his sense of manhood.

"Sure," he said, looking back to Andy. "Absolutely. Give me a beer."

"I will give you three," Andy declared.

He threw them at Ben's head. Fortunately one at a time, so Ben had a chance to duck and cover.

Ben managed to stay on his feet and on the opposite side of the room through his first beer, but midway through the second he gave in to Andy's insistence that he come over and sit on the floor in front of the couch with him, where he could better watch Andy play video games and listen to April's running commentary. That lasted until the middle of beer three, at which point April took the controller away from Andy and they switched roles.

Andy no longer having the controller meant that Andy's hands were free.

Andy was a cuddly drunk.

Ben hadn't planned on this, either, but it wasn't like anybody else had been offering him any hugs lately, or...for quite a while now, honestly. Except for Chris, and Chris's hugs were very bony and muscular and slightly unnerving. Andy was a soft hugger. Very comfortable.

Ben had a couple more beers and fell asleep on the living-room floor.

**

He was late to work the next morning, of course, because what else was going to happen when you passed out drunk on the floor a room away from your alarm clock, and you were no longer twenty-two years old and able to bounce back from that kind of thing instantaneously when you were awakened by the sunlight crawling across your face like an infectious disease.

He may have yelled all of that at April and Andy while shaving his face in the kitchen sink and inadvertently putting on mismatched socks. It wasn't his finest moment.

Things were very, very quiet around the house for a few days. Instead of being relieved, Ben mostly felt suspicious. With a twist of embarrassed. And maybe just a dusting of disappointed. A pinch of lonely. He couldn't even blame the alcohol, because they had consumed all of the beer that night, and if April and Andy had bought any more they were hiding it in their bedroom.

The quiet stretched on over the weekend. It was starting to make Ben's skin crawl.

"That might actually be fleas," Chris said. "Or bedbugs. How clean is that house?"

"I don't know why I come to you with my problems," Ben told him, but he stopped at the store on the way home and spent half an hour staring at medicated shampoos.

In the end he couldn't bring himself to buy any, because he didn't want to hurt April and Andy's feelings. He got frozen pizza instead.

It was the perfect peace offering.

"You're the best," Andy said, taking the first piece. "Ow. That's hot. But you are the _best_ , man, the actual best."

"I wouldn't go that far," Ben told him.

"Neither would I," April said, but when Ben looked over at her, she was almost smiling.

**

A few days after that, Ben came out of his bedroom just as the bathroom door swung open and April and Andy came out, holding hands and each wearing only a towel.

"Oh my God." Ben put his hand over his eyes and pressed back against the wall. " _Boundaries_ , you guys. We talked about this."

"We've got _towels_ ," Andy said. "I don't see what the problem is."

"April's towel is very loosely wrapped," Ben said. He felt a familiar ache starting up in his jaw. His dentist kept telling him not to clench his jaw, but it was impossible to tell that he was _doing_ it until he was already in pain.

"God!" April punched him in the arm. "You are so dumb!"

Ben mentally rewound and replayed the last minute and a half. "How am I being dumb?"

April gave him the version of her blank look that he privately referred to as The Terminator. "Explain it to him, Andy."

Andy shifted his weight, cinching his towel tighter around his waist. "Okay, Ben, the thing is..."

Andy's voice was doing that slightly nervous high-pitched thing, April was still glaring, and Ben suddenly found that he couldn't take this anymore. "It's your house," he said, putting his hands up in surrender. "Your house, I'm just the subleasee, you're totally right. You should wear towels whenever you want. I'm just going to...shower and go to work."

"It's Saturday," April said.

"Then I'll shower and go somewhere else."

She stared at him for another minute, then tugged her towel up higher and marched off to the bedroom. "Yeah, you would, wouldn't you?"

**

On Monday, Ben found himself once again going to Chris with his problems.

"I think April hates me," he told Chris's office couch, where he was lying facedown.

Chris turned a page in the file he was reading. "I'm sure she doesn't."

"She looks at me like she hates me."

"I'm not sure how you would tell."

Ben lifted his head an inch and stared at him. "Was that sarcasm?"

Chris looked back at him, wide-eyed. "No."

"You're still not helpful," Ben muttered, and dragged himself off the couch to go look for someone more insightful. That got rid of Tom right off the bat. And most of the rest of the office, actually.

He ran into Ann in the hallway. "Ann. In your experience, how would I tell if a woman hates me?"

"We don't come pre-programmed, you know."

"Okay, specifically, how would I tell if April hates me?"

She winced slightly. "I'm really not the person to ask about April."

"You don't understand her either, huh?"

"She and Andy understand each other, and that's good enough, don't you think?"

Ben looked at her for a minute, his stomach sinking. "Yes."

"You look like I just told you something bad."

"Not bad, exactly." He ran his hand through his hair. "Just awkward."

Of course, with Andy, awkward was a relative term. "April doesn't _hate_ you!" he said, grabbing Ben's shoulders. "Dude, no! She doesn't hate you at all. No."

"Well, she kind of looks at me like..."

Andy shook him. Hard. "No, no, dude. That's just her face."

Once he'd gently disentangled himself from Andy's grip enough to be able to think, Ben had to admit that the man had a point. "Okay. Well. Never mind, then."

"You going to be home for dinner tonight?"

"No," Ben said, rubbing his shoulder. "I've got a meeting. I'll be late."

"Late like midnight, or late like..."

Ben frowned, but Andy just kept looking at him with hopeful intensity. "Um...nine-thirty, I would guess."

"Nine-thirty. Awesome." Andy clapped his hands. "We will be ready for that!"

That couldn't possibly mean anything that would make any sense, but Ben was kind of tired of dealing with inexplicable things, so he let it go.

**

Letting it go was _never_ the right answer.

He stepped through the front door at precisely 9:33 and froze, his foot hovering a few inches above the floor. "Wow," he said. "Um. You guys."

April and Andy were on the couch. Or rather, Andy was on the couch, and April was on Andy, straddling his lap and kissing him with a lot of enthusiasm and without a shirt.

Her bra was really cute. Black, with some lacy stuff and little flowers. Ben was definitely not supposed to be looking at that.

"Ben," Andy said, turning his head just enough to look over the back of the couch at him. "Hi!"

"I told you I would be home at nine-thirty."

"You're late." April rested her chin on top of Andy's head and gave him a look that was just as blank as usual but decidedly less cold.

"I didn't realize it was an enforceable deadline." It finally occurred to him that he really ought to shut the door. "What are you guys doing?"

April smacked Andy on the arm. "You promised me he wasn't a virgin."

Ben took a deep breath, then another one. Maybe sitting down would be the best course of action. "You _wanted_ me to catch you having...foreplay all over the couch?"

"It's not really catching us if we're waiting for you, dumbass." April sighed and sat up, giving Andy a look. "I told you this wasn't going to work."

"Wait, this was Andy's idea?" He didn't know why that was any more surprising than the alternative. Maybe because he still wasn't completely sure that Andy _had_ ideas on a regular basis that weren't related to food or bands.

"No." April stood up and looked around at the floor. "It was mine. Where's my shirt?"

"Under the couch," Andy mumbled, shooting Ben what he could only describe as a hurt-puppy look. Damn it.

He rubbed the back of his neck and tried to put his thoughts into some kind of order. "You had an idea to entice me into a three-way of some sort?"

"God, you don't have to sound so _disapproving_." April balanced on one foot and picked her t-shirt up with her toes. "I mean, whatever, Andy and I are hot, you should be flattered."

"I am flattered! I'm just also kind of confused." He rested his head on his knees and took another deep breath. When he looked up again, they were both staring at him. "I had no idea you were into that kind of thing."

They both frowned at him, until April's eyes widened. "Oh. That's right. I broke up with them before you got to town. My bad."

" _Them_?" Ben asked. They both shrugged.

"So, you're totally not into it?" Andy asked, resting his chin on the back of the couch. "Because I gotta admit, that kind of bums me out. We had a whole plan. We bought chocolate sauce."

"I still think that's gross," April muttered.

"It's not gross, it's _awesome_."

"It's sticky and dirty and _weird_."

"I'm with April on this one," Ben said, "in case my opinion is relevant to anybody."

April pulled her t-shirt halfway over her head and peered at him through the neckhole. "It's only relevant if you're going to have sex with us."

"And actually," Andy added, "you can only have sex with us if you say out that you understand this isn't in any way going to get you a break on the rent."

"Well, as long as prostitution's not involved, that's totally..." Neither of them laughed, so Ben just let that one go.

This stuff never happened to him anywhere but in Pawnee.

"I'm not _agreeing_ to anything," he said finally, "but I could really use a beer."

"Dude," Andy whispered, catching April around the waist, "we are _so in_!"

Ben pretended not to hear that, or notice the high-fives and victory dance that followed, but yeah, they totally were.  



End file.
